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Posts by "qiman"
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20 Posts by Anonymous "qiman":
Interest rates on 10-year Belgian government bonds jumped from 3.15 to 3.50 per cent last week and investors are demanding a mounting premium to hold the debt over corresponding German paper.
Belgium's debt is currently at 99 per cent of its gross domestic product, the highest in the eurozone after Greece and Italy, and is forecast to exceed GDP by the end of the year
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a37cfa18-71ca-11df-8eec-00144feabdc0.html
Since the cheaper Euro makes exports more competitive, and with Germany especially being such an export machine, how much countervailing pressure is there by industry groups to keep the Euro low in order to further improve the export performances?
Also, I have really noticed that occasionally silver trades like a precious metal/gold proxy, while most days the focus is on its industrial uses, and then it falls or rises with the broader market. Have you ever seen any repeatable and tradeable pattern vis-a-vis this back and forth focus from precious metal to industrial metal? It seems rather random to me, but with your years of experience perhaps there is some trick up your sleeve?
"From the information released by UTA, we don't know precisely what innovation the scientists stumbled upon. The Austin TV reporter quoted Prof. Dennis as saying: "I had the idea for this while I was walking to my car. I ran back to the lab and I started drawing it out in my notebook."
As the scientists describe it, though, the technology uses "micro-fluidic reactors" that convert coal to synthetic crude at a fraction of the cost incurred with traditional conversion methods - and in a fraction of the time."
BTW, one of my best friends since childhood is a highly experienced petroleum engineer for the EPA in the Houston area--he disagrees with those who are immediately writing this off. And history is full of eureka moments that radically improve technology. Time will tell, as with all purported technological breakthroughs . . .
Researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington announced that they have developed a breakthrough and clean way to turn the cheapest kind of coal-lignite- into synthetic crude. "We're improving the cost every day. We started off some time ago at an uneconomical $17,000 a barrel. Today, we're at ... $28.84 a barrel," Rick Billo, UTA's dean of engineering, told an Austin television reporter.
Texas lignite coal sells for $18 a tonne. The coal conversion technology uses one tonne of coal to produce 1.5 barrels of crude oil. One barrel of crude produces 42 U.S. gallons of gasoline. In other words, $18 worth of coal yields 63 gallons of gasoline: 0.28 cents a gallon. A prototype refinery is slated for completion by the end of the year:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/texas-university-has-eureka-moment-for-coal-to-gas/article1502823/
As far as nations, I believe Brazil is gaining much momentum as a power while the developed economies stumble and fumble, India as well. Russia has done little to change its long term prospects. China and the US are just about certain to clash in a major way.
We are about to enter more volatile and dangerous times. As traders we should be able to make a alot of money from these energies--taking advantage of the chaos instead of being its victim. But only if we can flow with the trends and set our biases aside quickly!
"The implications of this are difficult to overstate. If the euro is essentially gutting the European and again to a greater extent the Club Med economic base, then Germany is achieving by stealth what it failed to achieve in the past thousand years of intra-European struggles."
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100315_germany_mitteleuropa_redux